Quill performs an unbounded read of HTTP response bodies during Apple notarization, buffering the entire response into memory without imposing a size limit. If an attacker can alter the response payload, they can cause the client to consume excessive memory and crash, leading to a denial of service. This weakness is identified as CWE‑770; it does not affect confidentiality or integrity.

All releases of Anchore Quill (both CLI and underlying library) prior to version 0.7.1 are affected when performing notarization operations. The issue was fixed in 0.7.1 and later.

The CVSS score of 5.3 indicates a moderate severity denial‑of‑service flaw, while the EPSS score of less than 1 % suggests a low likelihood of exploitation in the near term. The advisory states that exploitation requires the ability to modify Apple’s notarization service responses, which is normally prevented by HTTPS with proper TLS certificate validation. However, environments that use TLS‑intercepting proxies, have compromised certificate authorities, or otherwise violate the trust boundary are at risk. The likely attack vector is therefore inferred to involve TLS interception or CA compromise. Because the exploit depends on such uncommon conditions, the overall risk is moderate and largely contingent on the presence of these network vulnerabilities.